Everyone can sell!: Companies are constantly changing, and it is becoming increasingly common to train all employees, not only the sales staff, to promote their company’s products and services. Unfortunately, the image of sales people is often negative. Many may refer to promoting and selling as ”pushing” a product or service instead of viewing the sales person as a valuable partner who in a positive way help clients with problems and challenges. For a few years, Helena Ståhl has been working on a book about how good sales technique is based on good relations. The book will be released in early 2008.

By Helena Ståhl

I am convinced that everyone can sell, that it is not difficult, that it is not something negative but instead something fun and stimulating, and that successful selling is based on good relations – and that is something that everyone can have. To sell is neither about clever methods or manipulation. However, since most of us may have been subject to this, we much too often associate selling with something negative. To me, selling is something that is founded on trust between two parties who are honest and friendly to each other. In addition, selling is fun and easy – something that everyone can accomplish and that can be very joyful. This book will neither be the most serious nor the thickest you have read. On the other hand, I hope that it will inspire you to sell, help you see that good selling is all about relationship and trust, and motivate you to use a few simple tools to help you in your work.

”Read a book and become a better sales person!”

Well, it sound a bit loony, and for me it has not always worked. I have read numerous books on this topic during the 19 years I worked as a sales person. Many of them were good, some actually incredibly good. But many books about selling focus on methods and structures that are easy to understand but challenging to apply in reality. Other books are about other sales people’s success, and I have often been more intimidated than inspired by them, wondering why I can’t be ”as successful as everyone else”.

By all means, structure and good examples are important factors, but without good relationships I dare to say that the sales process will fail if there is no trust. I have searched for a book that focuses on how a sales person needs to have a genuine interest in and respect for the people he/she meets. I did not find a book that can inspire me and that teaches clear and simple methods that I immediately can apply in my work as a sales person – regardless of the product or service I am selling. So I decided to write it myself.

I looked for a book that was inspiring with examples from everyday life with which I could identify, a book that shed all the negative images of sales people, and finally, a book that had simple structures that I could easily use in my daily work in sales. The goal is that this book will be easy and fast to read and I that it will motivate and instill courage in the reader. Hopefully the reader will learn from, and avoid, all the mistakes that I have already made. I would like to be able to inspire you to focus on good relations between the people in your life so that this will lead to your best sales results ever! Since I sell and have been selling training and development courses for 20 years, most of the examples in the book come from my own world, but the book also contains examples from the clients and sales people I train. (The book will be released in 2008)